For eight years, Republicans repeatedly claimed that President Obama was blowing up the deficit and insisted they were the party of fiscal responsibility. The CBO just proved them to be liars.
There’s a reason why Republicans hate the Congressional Budget Office. It’s a non-partisan agency within the legislative branch that uses math and a variety of other economic factors to determine how a bill will affect the deficit and debt over time.
CBO scores have killed Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare.
And now it could very well kill Donald Trump’s tax plan.
On Monday morning, Trump crowed about the tax bill on Twitter, claiming that the middle class is going to get a really sweet deal.
The Tax Cut Bill is coming along very well, great support. With just a few changes, some mathematical, the middle class and job producers can get even more in actual dollars and savings and the pass through provision becomes simpler and really works well!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2017
But that’s a lie, and the CBO score proves it.
Not only will the bill add $1.4 TRILLION to the deficit over the next ten years, which would nearly quadruple it back to and beyond the deficit amount President Obama inherited from the George W. Bush Administration.
The current deficit stands at $440 billion for the fiscal year 2018. Trump’s plan would reverse all the hard work Democrats did to shrink it.
The CBO also reports that up to 13 million Americans would lose their health insurance over the next decade because of the individual mandate repeal that Republicans included in the bill. Also, health insurance premiums would rise 10 percent over the current projections.
In other words, the Republican tax bill will cost Americans a lot more money and will leave a deficit that we will have a harder time paying for.
In fact, tax revenues would drop significantly because most of the tax cuts are going to the wealthy and corporations. These cuts reduce their tax obligations while leaving the rest of us to pay down the deficit, which will be a lot harder to do since we will all have less money in our pockets because of the elimination of certain popular deductions in the bill. And the skyrocketing deficit that Republicans caused will give them an excuse to cut even more programs that the American people benefit from every day.
Meanwhile, wealthy individuals and corporations will take their money and run to the nearest offshore bank to hide it rather than using it to create the jobs Trump promised the tax cuts would create.
It’s exactly like what Republicans did to Kansas, where massive tax cuts for businesses and wealthy individuals crippled the state budget and resulted in a credit rating downgrade.
This tax plan is a disaster that should be opposed at all costs. It does the very thing that Republicans wrongly accused President Obama of doing to blowing up the deficit and takes healthcare away from millions of Americans. Make no mistake, only wealthy people like Trump will benefit from this tax plan. They’ll get more money and the rest of us will be left to pick up the tab, and with no health insurance, thus adding insult to injury.
